Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
What are the themes in Of Mice and Men?
Position‹3 of 5›
Of Mice and Men is about the loss of innocence
Argument‹2 of 2

Lennie's interactions with women

Lennie often finds himself in situations in which he injures or frightens a woman.

The argument

Lennie interacts with women similarly to how he interacts with animals. He is unable to understand social cues, which leads to the first incident with a woman. This situation occurs before the reader is introduced to George and Lennie. Lennie touches a woman's dress so that he can feel the texture of it, but the woman misunderstands and interprets his action as an attempted sexual assault. Lennie is unable to understand why she became so upset. This accusation drives George and Lennie out of town, which leads them to the ranch owned by Curley's father. The only other example of Lennie's behavior with women is seen when he encounters Curley's wife while trying to bury the puppy he killed. During this encounter, he begins petting her hair after she says that it's okay to do. Lennie then starts petting her hair too aggressively, which causes her to scream out. He panics, trying to silence her screams, and accidentally kills her. Lennie's intentions with both of these women, when compared to the end result of these encounters, exemplifies the loss of innocence that Lennie experiences.

Premises

[P1]Lennie cannot understand social cues, so his innocent acts toward women — touching a woman's dress to feel its texture, petting Curley's wife's hair — are misread and end in disaster. [P2] His innocent intentions repeatedly produce harmful results he does not comprehend, culminating in the accidental killing of Curley's wife. [C] Therefore, Lennie's interactions with women exemplify the loss of innocence that is a central theme of Of Mice and Men.

Counter-arguments

The two episodes with women are real and important, but they support the 'loss of innocence' reading less well than the argument claims, and arguably fit other central themes better. The difficulty is internal to the term: Lennie does not lose his innocence in these encounters — he remains uncomprehending before, during and after each, unable to grasp why the woman in Weed reacted as she did or why Curley's wife screamed. What the scenes dramatise is the tragic danger of innocence that persists, combined with a physical strength he cannot control, rather than a fall from innocence into experience; his innocence endures right up to his death. Read on their own terms, the same episodes are standardly taken to develop the novel's other, more prominent themes: the powerlessness and vulnerability of the weak and marginalised on the ranch, the impossibility of the characters' shared dream, and — through Curley's wife's own loneliness and thwarted hopes — the isolation that pervades the book. So the interactions illustrate several themes at once, and 'loss of innocence' is not clearly the one they single out, nor even the most apt description of what happens to Lennie, whose innocence is never actually lost.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Lennie remains uncomprehending throughout, so the scenes dramatise the tragic danger of his enduring innocence combined with his strength, not a 'loss' of innocence — he never loses it. [Rejecting P2] The same episodes standardly illustrate other central themes — the powerlessness of the weak, the death of dreams, and Curley's wife's loneliness — so they do not single out loss of innocence as the novel's theme.